What Must Be Done

What Must Be Done

It’s not as though I wanted to do it. It’s not as though I was walking down the hall, full of foreign voices, and decided to draw more attention to myself. In fact, that’s precisely why I did it in the bathroom stall. I mean, that was more appropriate anyway, don’t you think? It’s not as though I could’ve done it on the plane, and I knew it had to be done if I was to get out of that place. I might regret it now.

I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it, but I’d bought a broad range of supplies. They were serrated, grated, but mostly long. I cried on the way into the terminal at Detroit, “No, sir, just a death in the family. I’ll be okay.” I was tired of lies.

Jesus, was I weak. If that…blubbering beast hadn’t put me in this place, I think---no. I can’t think. Not for myself, not even in my head. Mark told me so. So did Collin, my attorney, ironically enough. I don’t know why Collin wants to help me anyway. I’m as bad as Marcus.

No one knows it’s Mark’s fault, though. My parents think he sent me to this city as a gift. Only I understand the truth. Only me, the girl that’s always bitten her nails habitually, not because I wanted to flirt. That’s what Marcus told me while he held me in his fish-reeking hut of a condo. I was flirting with him? Maybe I was.

Me: the self conscious college of cosmetology drop-out. I’m seriously the only rational thinker out there.

I’ve never had an appetite, you know. My new waistline wasn’t a product of Mark’s mom’s cinnamon rolls. I hate pretending around his family. I hate that he pretends around mine. I hate that he’s anywhere near my mom and dares to pour her coffee with his yellow smile, his disrespectfully unshaven upper lip. I hate my mom for not sending that snout of a shit-grin away.

Those bristles under his greasy nose ripped along my skin, I remember it. Over and over, he scratched my chest with his face, biting too hard on my flesh and harder when I shook. I do remember.

Driving, tearing my skirt, choking me with my grandma’s silk blouse, he did it. Only I know his disgusting truth. He’s the coward.

I had to get by myself in that stall, had to reach for the broach-pin, I had to. It was glistening in my carry-on since Florida. The flight was endless. I couldn’t bear to sit through another, to make her sit through many more flights just like this in the years to come. I know it was a girl, I do. I don’t know why Marcus doubts me. The fucker.

He made me do it, he knows I couldn’t have done it otherwise. He knew if he stuffed his shit far enough into me that the repercussions would destroy my nerve. Ha. My nerve. I gathered every ounce of it while I reached for the broach-pin. I couldn’t get on another flight. I wasn’t going to run and I was too young to stay put.

I watched the prick send a trickle down my jeans, and it hurt. But I had to do it, I had to send it deeper inside to the thing he’d stuck me with. My face hurt, it was clenched so hard; it was almost as tense as my empty fist on the toilet seat. The room smelled like horse shit, and I was vomiting like hell as I drove it in and felt warm body come out as I voyaged through abdominal foliage. My fingertips were repulsed sensors to my pain, but I little hesitated.

Finally, I pulled it out. I wasn’t getting anywhere. My right hand stung; I’d cut it with the broach as I cut through my belly-button ring hole. My stomach felt numb, as if cold air had frostbitten my skin surrounding the gaping hole. My baby was crying. I could feel her tears on me as I cried on my own self, in throaty sobs. She needed this, though, almost more than me. She needed to take a breath of an air of heroic salvation before her moment of departure on this earth. I needed to ensure that I saved her from him, from an unyielding truth that as hard as you try, life cannot be your own. I gave her a moment of life as an unburdened individual.

I could hear people outside the door, see the vomit on the toilet paper roll. My blood was streaming down the cracks of the dirty tiles, and someone was banging on the door. My heart was screaming.

We weren’t getting on that flight, Marcus. You must have known that.